For every copy of Dave Matthews Band's CD "Busted Stuff" that was sold, that is money that the RIAA would NOT have earned if Napster didn't exist.

Those songs on that CD comes from the Lillywhite sessions. These were scrapped, and eventually they leaked out onto Napster. The people liked it, and the songs were polished up a little and released as Busted Stuff.

Had Napster not existed, the CD wouldn't exist, and nor would the money.

If the RIAA had any brains, they would intentionally release unreleased material on networks, check out the response, and publish it! Firstly, though, you have to make sure that the consumer is not going to be afraid to download these songs, otherwise you're screwed, and I think they've reached that point with many people....

i thinks its more of 'hey look its a new dave matthews band song that i havent downloaded yet ill see what it is' and the lable is like shit, shit we are loosing potential money here, release it quick on cd as a new album!

but like it or not p2p does lower album sales. i have numerous friends who are like whatever why bother buying it when i have mp3's that i can download for free.

"theres no such thing as a free lunch" if people keep on stealing songs than no-one will buy them as long as theres cd burners and p2p to download songs though kazaa is beconing even more dislocated with all teh RIAA law suits that they are filing against people.

I think that we can argue forever wether P2P lowers the sales of music or not.... as anything can be proven with statistics....

Anyhow, it's for sure that companies loose money because certain materials cannot be bought in stores. Some material isn't produced anymore, other materials were never released (bootlegs and such) etc etc. Too bad that there's often no legal way to obtain this music (Napster, iTunes etc etc could try to close this gap).

On the other hand, music with a lower durability (charts stuff) is very likely to be downloaded instead of being bought. That makes sense, as most of that music is crappy (not only according to my personal preferences, but even some of the big record companies think so) and it's durability is about 3 months at max. The main target for this music are the teenagers, and those are the ones without money. They'd rather download then pay for something worthless (couldn't agree more!)...